How Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey built a company free from the evils of what the actor calls ‘Old Hollywood’
Team Downey It started as a way for husband and wife to work together. That’s how they’ve turned their production company into an incubator of creativity.
While Robert Downey Jr. is perhaps best known as Iron Man, the actor spends many of his days as a business owner, working his head off at the production company he co-founded with his wife, producer Susan Downey.
They met on the set of the film Gothika (2003) and as their relationship grew, they discovered that the weeks they spent apart while Susan traveled for films she was producing were a “a recipe not only for disaster, but also for heartbreak… finding things we love and being able to be together in a creative process”Susan said in a conversation at the Fast Company Innovation Festival.
The couple formed the production company Team Downey in 2010. Over the past decade, they have produced films such as Dolittle and The Judgethe television series Perry Mason and a series of documentaries, The Age of AI
In addition to offering the duo a way to work together, Team Downey also offered them the opportunity to build a production company that aims to be the opposite of what Robert calls “Old Hollywood, which is a gulag with death by work syndrome».
The Old Hollywood model, as he describes it, is “where you’re stuck in a job that seems great on the surface, but there’s no trajectory toward not actually needing the production company and all its facilities to thrive.”
Susan refers to Team Downey as a more “family-like” organization: “That doesn’t mean the scope of what we do is small. It just means the way we do it is very practical.” Because the organization is large and the Downeys are also busy with two children, she says they’ve built a culture of intense exploration — taking on just a few projects that everyone loves.
“In the end you realize that if you are going to take the time to do something, you have to love it.”says. “You have to be willing to know where those hours are going to go, because they’re not going to go anywhere else.”
Susan’s theory on healthy company culture, she says, applies to any group, whether on a set, in a relationship, or in a company (useful, because her work life encompasses all three): the foundation is communication, trust, and respect. If you’re fostering those three values well, you’ll create a culture of independence, where everyone is getting a practical education and inspiration. «No one has to sit at a desk for long. Come in, do the work, absorb as much as you can. Do it“, says.
Robert says what has evolved at Team Downey is an atmosphere that allows people multiple paths and options. Some employees dig deep and become lifesavers. Others use Team Downey as a launching pad for their own endeavors.
Unlike some big companies or old Hollywood studios, employees who quit to pursue their own projects don’t hold grudges, Robert says: “Some people take the experience and go out… and now we’re watching the movie they’re writing. Go, ‘great!’ It really is a kind of incubation.”
